The present invention generally relates to server-client networks, and more specifically, to systems and methods for hierarchical spanning tree software patching with fragmentation support.
Software patching is often needed to maintain remote devices up-to-date, which assists in preventing vulnerability of attacks in a network such as a sever-client network. Hackers attempt to take advantage of outdated devices by attacking vulnerabilities of those devices. For example, a hacker may attempt to inject, attack, and/or spread malware across a network by tampering with the software of a particular device found in the server-client network. Example devices include network switches, user computers, and Internet-of-Things (IoT) enabled devices such as home automation devices, smart city, sensors and other devices.
Software patching in large networks can easily become unmanageable and open to attacks. Currently, some systems patch devices (e.g., client nodes) of a network by transmitting a patch from a single server to a large number of nodes. However, as only one server is tasked to update all nodes, those systems are unable to scale to support an increase in the number of devices in the network. This problem is magnified in networks that include IoT devices. Moreover, as some nodes are not directly accessible by the server, some nodes of the server-client network might be unreachable to the server when distributing patches (e.g., private subnetwork, local area network, LAN, etc.)